Finlay van der Welken's life is a collection of memories that are now closely guarded by his parents. The 16-year-old is remembered as a beloved son, a devoted brother and a loyal friend.
“I still hear him laugh,” said his father, GJ Van Del Welken. “Finlay was the typical eldest son. (He) was very responsible, caring for his twin siblings and making friends wherever he went.
“He tended to be drawn to children who seemed to have no other friends or who seemed to be struggling with school and contacts, so he just made them feel embraced and welcomed.”
In early February 2024, a migraine left Finlay at home from school. His mother, Hazel, said this happens sometimes when Finlay gets sick. However, his condition deteriorated and Hazel decided to take him to Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital.
“He's screaming in pain and just watching me, like he's taking me somewhere,” Hazel said. “He could say he didn't know what was going on, but he knew it wasn't normal so I drove as fast as possible.
“When I got to the hospital, I just dumped my car at the ER door and ran. We had a lot of people. The corridors lined up with people. We sat and kept screaming.
Photos provided by Hazel van der Welken.
Hazel says he won't see the doctor for hours, despite Finlay saying things aren't going well.
“When I got up at 3am, they said, well, we only have one doctor, but there's one in four. I don't know where one doctor is,” recalls Hazel.
In a review of hospital records, Meghan Walker, lawyer for Martin and Hillier, said, “Finlay was triaged almost exactly at 10:00. He was not actually seen by doctors until 6:22am.”
According to a statement of claims about what happened, when he watched the following morning, doctors said Finlay “experienced sepsis/pneumonia with hypoxia and he is at a high risk of acute degradation.”
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His level of Oxygen, where lawyers said hospital records had fallen all night, was also a concern.
“I remember what I told Finlay, like the Finlay we have to get, we're looking at this screen with his oxygen saturation.
“His breathing was very shallow by this point, and he said, 'I can't go deep. It hurts so painful.'
Finlay had to be intubated in the end. The decision was made to move him to Sickkids Hospital in Toronto. But before that happened, he fell into cardiac arrest. The statement of the claim stated that “the causes of the arrest were listed as septic shock, pneumonia.”
Photos provided by Hazel van der Welken.
Finlay arrived at Sickkids and was taken to the ICU. He was suffering from hypotension shock and was placed in ECMO, a life support system that helps take over the patient's heart and lung function.
However, staff told Hazel and GJ that Finlay's organ function had deteriorated and that continuing the ECMO was considered “no waste.”
“We had to make a decision… remove Findlay from life support,” Hazel said in tears. “Or at risk of the situation escalating further and he wakes up and dies from a lot of pain,” GJ added.
After Finlay's death, Hazel and GJ say they will meet with hospital staff to review what happened. “They didn't say they were wrong,” Hazel said. “But they admitted that if Finlay had been seen before, it could have been a different outcome.”
Global News reached out to comments on the story.
In a written statement, a Halton Healthcare official said: “We are deeply committed to providing high quality, caring care to the communities serving all three hospitals, Milton District Hospital, Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, Georgetown Hospital, and the community serving the community site.
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“Like many hospitals, there are more and more patients presenting with increasingly complex health and comorbidities, and often require longer stays and more intensive care. This places a great demand on the emergency department, patient flow, bed availability and patient experience.”
Photos provided by Hazel van der Welken.
The family then launched a lawsuit claiming that the health care team monitored Finlay, introduced appropriate protocols for treatment, and informed the family of the true nature of his condition.
Meghan Walker is the lead lawyer on the matter.
“The experts have no doubt that if this is a treatable condition and he is treated promptly, he will be here today.
“He was triaged as the second highest level in triage. Under the guidelines, he should be seen within 15 minutes, 95% of the time.”
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The hospital says it is making changes to track data more closely and is improving its on-call coverage standards protocols and other tools and working groups to improve patient flow and communication.
In an update provided on July 18th, they said that the “Length of Staff Committee” was launched in the fall of 2024 and the “Command Centre” was opened on July 1st, 2025, with the goal of helping to improve the flow of the emergency department. Additionally, Dr. Ian Pleila is on board as the new vice president of medical and academics, while Dr. Prashant Falfer is the new chief of emergency and programme medical director.
However, this will never happen again, as families want more recognition.
“We feel disappointed and we can't trust our healthcare system as we do now,” GJ said. As a result, the Van der Werken family has launched an awareness campaign called “Finlay's Voice.”
“We felt we needed to stand up for Finlay and be his voice in the sense of what we could do,” Hazel said. “We have been through this tragedy, but we are still alive every day, and we can choose not to say anything.
“If we don't tell the story, how will change come about?”
Families hope that their tragedy will spark new efforts to remedy the flaws in the health care system, and are calling for MPPS, the Ministry of Health and local stakeholders to engage.
Halton Healthcare declined to interview on camera and told Global News via email that it had not commented on individual patient cases or litigation issues.
As of Friday, July 25th, Walker said no defence statements had been filed.